Tag: Amigurumi

This week I’m back to posting my Pocket Dolls that will be on sale at FanExpo Vancouver in November – next up, Star Wars: The Force Awakens! I’ve made tiny versions of Rey, Finn, Poe, and Kylo Ren, check them out below the cut.

Rey

The biggest challenge for Rey was the hair, and I obsessed for awhile over how I wanted to do it. I thought about sewing individual strands to her head and then forming them into buns, which I did for a larger Rey I made (I’ll post pictures of her, too!), but that ended up being hell to work with and it just fell apart unless I sewed it all in place. I ended up crocheting a base of brown directly into her head (so her head is half flesh/half hair). Then I crocheted three flat pieces that are wider in the middle (started with single crochet then worked up from half double to double to triple crochet for the middle couple of stitches, then back towards single) and sewed them into loops that I then sewed on to her head. I think it worked ok. 🙂

The staff has a pipe cleaner down the middle to keep it from being too floppy, while avoiding using actual wire that could poke out (especially if a child buys it). I’m desperately hoping that a tiny Rey cosplayer will buy her so I can take a picture of Tiny Rey with Pocket Rey. There are lots of little girls dressing up as her at cons (which I love!), so fingers crossed.

Finn

Finn was actually the first of the SW Pocket Dolls I made. Don’t have much to say about him; I think he’s cute. 🙂

Poe

Poe came second (I was putting off making Rey because of her hair…), so Finn wouldn’t get lonely. I’ve added a couple of details to his flightsuit but I think I might add some more, still. It’s hard to get much detail when they’re small, though. Even so, he’s recognizable especially when paired with the others.

Stormpilot feels. <3 Cuddling up together.

but uh oh… someone’s coming to ruin it all…

Kylo Ren

On my concept sketch for Kylo Ren, I just wrote ‘MORE EMO’ and ‘bigger ears’ lol. He does in fact have slightly bigger ears than the others; I added one extra stitch. Could probably be more emo, though. He needs a Hot Topic tee shirt. 😉

Sorry to everyone for the long delay between posts! I’m making a pact with myself to post once a week from now on, and will try to start building this blog more. My only excuse is that I’ve been hard at work making lots of dolls for FanExpo Vancouver in November! To that end, I’m going to start sharing pictures (and eventually patterns in some cases) for the dolls that I’ll be selling at the convention. If you’re going to be in town, come check out our booth. We’ll post more details & our booth number closer to the event once we have that information. Erika’s been working hard too, making lots of awesome and adorable cross stitch buttons for the event (hint: some of them may involve a certain little orange & white droid…).

First up, I want to begin sharing my newest creations: Pocket Dolls. These little guys are now taking over my life and will feature heavily at our booth, because they are both quick(ish) to make and cute. Today I’m sharing the story of how they began and posting pictures of my first three – Captain America, Bucky, and Iron Man.

I feel like this picture is basically the storyline of CA: Civil War… “My Bucky!” “No, my Bucky!”. And poor Bucky in the middle…

It all began 2 days before I was due to see Captain America: Civil War with a big group of friends. On Thursday night I decided out of the blue, “I need a pocket sized Bucky to cuddle during this movie.” Especially since I planned to wear my Captain America hoodie, so of course I needed a little Bucky to go in my pocket! The only flaw in this plan was that it was 10pm on Thursday night, I knew I’d be working all day Friday followed by an office party, and Saturday I had more work stuff in the morning followed by about 4 free hours before I’d have to head out to the movie. And I didn’t have a design or a pattern beyond “small and cute and Bucky”.

Prototype Pocket!Bucky was pretty rough, but I got him done. Head & body were done Thursday night and probably Friday morning before work. After the Saturday work stuff downtown I knew I wouldn’t have time to go home, so I sat in a green space near the Vancouver waterfront and made Bucky’s arms and legs and started assembly & details. Transited out to the theatre to meet friends from dinner, and sat in A&W frantically attaching hair. Stood in the lineup to get into the theatre STILL attaching hair. He was kind of lopsided and his hair was a mess, but he was finished! After the movie I tore out his hair and re-did it to look nicer, and gave him to my friend for her birthday.

Just for fun – Pocket!Bucky 1.0 in progress. Sitting outside of the theatre starting the hair. And yes, that’s Captain America in my backpack, sitting on top of a bag of stuffing. 😉

Completed Pocket!Bucky 1.0, after I fixed the hair.

That done, I started refining the pattern and making Pocket!Bucky 2.0. I decided that I wanted the head to be a bit smaller and the arms to be a bit bigger and more exaggerated. Starting with Captain America, I also began crocheting the hair colour right into the head – even for long haired characters, since that way I could avoid the flesh-coloured gaps between hair strands. I’m still fiddling with the pattern, and no matter what I seem to do each one comes out a slightly different size. Some sit up better than others. Some are just more polished looking than others. But I’m having fun with them and overall am happy with the look!

Since Bucky, I’ve made Pocket Captain America & Iron Man, who I’ve shared below, and a whack of other Pocket dolls that I’ll be sharing in upcoming posts. Patterns are coming as well.

Short male hair styles has always been one of my biggest frustrations, so this time I decided to just crochet the hair colour right into the head and then do a ridge of slip stitches along the colour change line.

I decided to make Cap’s shield on his back this time, in part to give him more stability (he kept falling backwards otherwise) and in part just for a change of pace. My other Captain Americas all were holding their shield. The shield is secured by straps and can be taken off. 🙂

I added a few higher stitches in the front of Tony’s hair, to give his hair a bit of height.

And for some bonus fun, check out these side by side pictures of Pocket!Cap and Pocket!Iron Man versus the little Cap and Iron Man that I made years ago when I was just starting to crochet. I was trying to go for a sort of beanie baby look and instead it just looked like Cap had really let himself go lol. And Tony’s body is weirdly… elongated… It’s nice to see that I’ve progressed since then! Still lots to learn and improve on, but I’m definitely getting there.

That’s it for now! Coming soon: Star Wars, Justice League, more Marvel, and various others…

Hi everyone! I’m finally going back and writing up some of my pending Baby Groot Around Vancouver posts that I’ve been meaning to do for awhile. Today’s post is Baby Groot’s first trip out of the Lower Mainland – to Naramata in the Okanagan Valley last September. Come and join Baby Groot as he goes to the beach, picks apples, and indulges in some wine tasting!

The Okanagan Valley is located is the interior of British Columbia, roughly half way to Alberta and at the south end of the province. The region is known for its hot and dry climate, and is a popular getaway spot for locals in the summer. Kelowna is the biggest city in the area, but we headed instead to the small town of Naramata, located at the south end of Lake Okanagan.

So, what is there to do in the Okanagan, you ask? There are lots of outdoor activities such as hiking, biking, and swimming in Lake Okanagan, but our main goal was the wine! The Okanagan Valley is well known for its fruit trees and vineyards, and you can’t drive two minutes along the ‘Naramata Bench’ without tripping over another winery. The honest truth is I don’t actually drink wine, but my friends do and I enjoyed coming along for the ride (and taking a lot of pictures of Baby Groot with wine grapes). I did try a tiny bit, too – the fruit wines weren’t bad, but I’m still not a big fan. Plus it was fun watching my friends steadily get drunker throughout the day. 😉

We headed out of Vancouver after work on Friday September 4th, and immediately hit about 2 hours worth of gridlock. Trying to get out of Vancouver at the start of the last long weekend in summer? Not the greatest idea, but we didn’t have much choice. Normally a 4 hour drive, it ended up being more like 6 and we got in after midnight.

Baby Groot was tired after the long drive. Time for bed!

Saturday morning we headed to the weekend farmer’s market in Penticton, the main town 15 or so minutes from Naramata. It was huge! So many booths with fresh produce, yummy looking baked goods, crafts, clothing… lots to look at, and hard to resist the urge to buy All The Things.

And then it was on to wine tastings! I’m pretty useless on a wine tour given that I don’t drink, and I don’t drive so I can’t even be the designated driver, but I came along anyway to hang out, take Groot pictures, and enjoy the scenery.

Pretty vineyard scenery!

Selfie time

This place had a neat shop that kept me amused while the others did their tasting – they have a bunch of red heel related merchandise, including actual shoes!

Groot found some grapes

Groot likes the grapes. 🙂

Thumbs up for Ruby Blues Winery, if only for their cool shop and bus!

We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening just hanging out, eating, and drinking wine. Well, they were drinking, I was watching with amusement as they got increasingly drunk by the end of the night. My friends Andrea and Amanda do a weekly Buffy the Vampire Slayer podcast called ‘Tiny Fences‘, and at approximately 11pm they decided it would be an awesome idea to record an episode. I might have encouraged them. 😉 I definitely recommend checking out their podcast, and if you enjoy it you can sign up to be a Patreon – and gain access to “Tipsy Fences! A Buffy Podcast”. It’s 5-10 minutes of ridiculousness.

Baby Groot got a little drunk too…

The next day was beach day on Lake Okanagan. By early September it was already getting a bit chilly and the water was freezing so I didn’t last long, but it was still lots of fun.

Monday came and it was time to head home… but first, we picked a ton of apples, plums, and pears from our friend’s orchard – fresh fruit right off the tree, so good! Groot helped too, of course.

Groot found pears!

Climbing the tree to get at the apples, Groot got a bit stuck.

He made it! But he can’t reach the apples, poor guy. His arms are just too short.

That was a lot of effort, time for a nap now.

Saying goodbye to Naramata

And that’s it from me for today. Next up, my Nova Scotia trip from September as I try to get caught up on my backlog. And coming very soon – New Zealand! I take off in just under a week and am getting very excited. I plan to bring white, orange, and grey yarn and churn out BB-8s while I’m there. 🙂 And many, many Groot photos will be coming. Groot is heading to Middle Earth!

My main project right now is supposed to be making dolls for Vancouver FanExpo 2016 (in November), but I took a break to make a doll for myself that’s about 13 years overdue – Wesley Wyndam-Pryce from Buffy & Angel. Click on the cut below for more doll pictures and a lot of gushing about one of my all time favourite characters. Honestly this was largely an excuse for me to Google pictures and animated GIFs of Wes look bad-ass…

I was 16 and just starting grade 12 when I discovered Buffy the Vampire Slayer, after watching the season 7 premiere as it aired. I’d heard good things, and I was channel surfing, so I decided to check it out. I had no real idea what was going on, but I liked it and I went back and watched the first 6 seasons & seasons 1-3 of Angel to catch up. That was my first term of grade 12, marathoning Buffy and Angel thanks to old download services like Kazaa because they weren’t even on DVD yet and there was no other way to catch up. I caught up on both shows by December/January. It’s amazing I ever got into university, hah. I missed a few key episodes of Angel season 2, as well, because I just couldn’t find them (like Reunion, and I think Reprise as well – BIG ones, guys!).

I don’t recall at what point I completely fell in love with Wesley. I don’t have any strong memories of my feelings when he first showed up in Buffy season 3. Probably vague amusement combined with finding him a bit annoying, because let’s be honest, he’s not the most likable in Buffy season 3. At least not the first time through – in rewatches, I still love him because I understand where he’s coming from and I know where he will be going. I just rewatched season 3 and I wanted to give him a hug the entire time, because he tried his best and the Scoobies didn’t exactly give him a chance.

My adorable dork in season 3 of Buffy. Still looks suave and sexy with that sword. 😉

And then we moved on to Angel season 1 and got this. <3

Definitely by the end of Angel season 1 I really liked the character, and by the time we got to late season 3 and into season 4 I was gone. I caught up to the show between 4.07 and 4.08 and watched the rest live, and I don’t think I’ve ever been as invested in a show or a character as I was at the time. Season 4 has its issues, I know, but Wesley’s character arc was so fascinating and well developed that it made up for some of the other crap in that season. I shipped the hell out of Wesley/Lilah, and on the fanfic side Wesley/Angel, and analyzed every episode and Wesley scene to death on my old Livejournal. I was obsessed, and I still consider Wesley to be without question my favourite character from the Jossverse.

This picture pretty much sums it up – character development in a nutshell. And it’s all completely organic from start to finish. He doesn’t just change into a badass overnight, it takes years to develop to the point where it makes total sense how he got from A to B.

So, fastforward years later, and my old obsession has risen its head again thanks to my friends Andrea and Amanda and their awesome Buffy podcast Tiny Fences. Amanda’s never seen the show and she’s about to meet Wesley, which is both exciting for me and nerve-wracking because I realize that season 3 of Buffy doesn’t exactly endear him to most people. But that usually changes when they get to Angel, so I will try to be patient! Amanda can’t read this post yet in any case, because spoilers (and if you are reading this, Amanda, then bad on you!).

And thus, I have at last made myself a Wesley doll. Season 4 Wesley, complete with sexy brown jacket, stubble, a gun, and yes, the scar. Bad-ass, dark, I’m-gonna-fuck-you-up, slightly unhinged Wesley. My favourite kind, although I also adore dorky lovable Wesley from the early seasons. Basically I love him always.

The pattern is based on patterns from the book ‘AmiguruME’ by Allison Hoffman. Check out her blog here, she has lots of cool stuff. I really like the book, it’s got techniques and ideas for making specific kinds of tops, pants, shoes, accessories, etc and it’s a great reference for designing dolls.

Ready for a fight. Because gun-wielding Wesley will never not be hot.

Case in point

Case in point 2 (the way he caresses that rifle… does things to me)

And of course he wouldn’t be season 4 Wesley without the scar!

“I had my throat slit and all my friends abandoned me.” My baby. 🙁

For the old shipper in me…

They just both look so angry lol. But also cuddly.

Then Spike wanted in on the action (he’s a very simple doll I made back at Halloween to bring with me to a local Once More with Feeling sing-along, since I was dressing as Buffy).

Yeah I’ve definitely read this fanfic.

I kind of want to make a Lilah, too, because they are my forever AtS OTP. But first, I have lots of Star Wars dolls to make for FanExpo! Maybe one day.

Hope you enjoyed my Wesley love session and the doll. 🙂 I enjoyed making him and it’s nice to finally have a doll version of one of my favourite characters of all time. I’m re-watching season 5 right now, and will definitely need to cuddle him coming up. Anyway that’s all for now, thanks for reading!

Recently I learned that a friend of mine has never seen Les Miserables, either on stage or the movie version, and as a big fan of the play I had to take it upon myself to fix that. So this afternoon a few of us got together at my place, made pancakes for brunch, and watched Les Mis! She enjoyed the movie and I kept my word and didn’t sing along (out loud), and I came away from it feeling inspired to A. make this blog post about the Les Mis dolls I made for my friend Elizabeth last year, and B. read a lot of fic…

Javert is either trying to punch Valjean or hold his hand. Possibly both. Their relationship is complicated. 😉

I blame my getting into Les Mis on a few things: my cousin Laura, Elizabeth, someone on my old Livejournal, and everyone in Dartmouth, NS who went to see Skyfall of December 26th, 2012. Which sounds strange, I realize, but bear with me. We were visiting family in Halifax that Christmas, and on Boxing Day we decided to head to the movies. My cousin Laura is a big theatre fan (and a theatre director herself!), and she along with most of my family were going to Les Mis. She was super excited about it, but I didn’t know anything about it (beyond vague knowledge that it’s a Broadway musical about historical France) and had little interest. So Dad and I were going to go see Skyfall, but when we got to the theatre it was sold out and we decided to tag along to Les Mis.

I know these stories usually end in “I came out of the theatre in love and was instantly a huge fan”, but it’s not really true. I enjoyed the movie a lot and was glad I went, but then I mostly forgot about it until one year later when someone on my LJ randomly posted about the movie and linked to some Valjean/Javert fic. I ended up rewatching the movie, reading a TON of fic over New Years 2013/14 (I think I read around 200,000 words over the course of a few days), and getting completely hooked.

Since then I’ve seen it live on the London stage (approximately five hours after my plane landed after a 9-hour overnight flight from Vancouver, I was very tired), live in Vancouver last summer, and have listened to the 10th Anniversary Concert soundtrack approximately a billion times (or at least certain songs). Seeing it on the London stage utterly blew me away, even though I almost fell asleep during “I Dreamed a Dream” (I was really tired ok). You could have heard a pin drop in the audience during “Stars”, it was mesmerizing.

Anyway, the reason I blame Elizabeth although she wasn’t involved in me originally getting into it, is because she’s my main Les Mis fan friend and totally helped to enable my growing obsession 2 years ago. 😉 As thanks, I made her these little Valjean and Javert dolls for her birthday last year! They’re based on the stage version rather than the movie version, mainly the Wilkinson & Quast versions. I do still enjoy the movie, but after seeing it on stage and listening to the 10th Anniversary Concert soundtrack so much, I find it hard to listen to Russell Crowe… I do think he does a good job of acting the part and bringing emotion to the role, but his singing voice just isn’t that strong. Nothing can really compare to Quast’s version of “Stars”, though!

Yes I embroidered 24601 to his chest. Because I could. 🙂

I had a lot of fun with the hair and sideburns, I must say

I want to make some for myself now – I may have to! It was hard giving them away, although I do get to see them when I visit her. 🙂

And as a bonus, check out below what she made for me in return last month for my birthday! So cute!!

So, December 17 was my 30th birthday and, of course, it was also Star Wars day! I will confess up front that, although I definitely like the movies and respect their importance in nerd fandom and pop culture, I’ve never been a super huge fan of them. I didn’t see them as a child (tragic I know!), so I didn’t finally see them until I was 15 (just before Attack of the Clones came out). I’ve always enjoyed them, but I’ve only seen them a handful of times each and haven’t memorized them like certain people I know. 😉 Still, Star Wars day being on my birthday was pretty cool. No spoilers, but I really enjoyed the movie and am looking forward to seeing it again at some point.

And of course, when I enjoy something… I have to crochet it. Especially when that something has a super cute character that is essentially two balls on top of each other and thus can be made in just a few hours. So this was my Christmas Eve project, made while hanging out at my parents’ house on Bowen Island – the newest droid in the Star Wars universe, BB-8!

He took me a good chunk of the day on and off but was basically pretty quick and easy. I’ll get a pattern written up one of these days. I need to adjust the head shape to be more domed, and I might do the orange circles differently. I used a black safety eye for the main one, and a smaller googly eye for the other one. 🙂

I finished him in the evening, and then before I went to bed I started this little guy. I want to make Christmas ornaments to sell at FanExpo Vancouver 2016, which will be in November so the perfect time for some early Christmas shopping. This was super fast, like I made most of him in about 45 minutes around midnight on Christmas Eve, and the rest in another 30 or so minutes on Christmas morning. The orange circles are very quick and rough, and when I make them to sell I’ll be more careful and plan them out before I stitch them on (then they will actually all be circular…). He needs a second eye too, because I had limited craft supplies on Bowen. But anyway, he is cute and I enjoy him!

While we’re on the topic of Star Wars dolls, this is as good a time as any to post pictures of the Han and Leia dolls I made for my friend Nic last year. She got married in Australia in February, and she’s a huge lifelong Star Wars fan. They had Han and Leia cake toppers, too! So of course I had to make her dolls to include in the reception.

Han and Leia wedding dolls

The bride and groom with Han and Leia

And that’s it for now! I hope everyone had a great holiday break, and Happy New Year to all!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! I hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season. I’ve spent the last few days at my parents’ house on Bowen Island hanging out with family, playing board games, and eating far too much. It was Groot’s first Christmas and he had fun getting to know our Christmas tree (a fellow tree for him to talk to in monosyllabic speech!):

Christmas Eve – Groot awaits Santa Claus…

Groot also made another new friend – Groot pillow! My cousin bought this for me at a craft fair in Kingston, Ontario and I have no idea who the artist is unfortunately. I tried Googling ‘Groot pillow’ but didn’t have any luck. If by some miracle the artist ever finds their way to this page, please send me an email and I’ll add a link to your website! It’s super cute and I love it. 🙂

Groot and Groot pillow! We are Groot!

The last weekend before Christmas was our NerdHQ annual Christmas dinner – tons of Italian food, lots of friends and fun, and Groot.. had a bit too much to drink. Oh dear.

Groot with the holiday Groot Funko Pop – and a bottle of beer.

Too much beer, can’t move now.

Groot found wine! No, Groot, drinking wine is not a good cure for being drunk on beer…

Groot did perk up later, though, to enjoy a screening of the sublimely ridiculous Canadian short film Treevenge partway through dinner. A NerdHQ Christmas tradition now, Treevenge is… well, pretty much exactly how it sounds. Christmas trees come to life and exact bloody, bloody revenge on the humans who cut them down and decked them out in ornaments in tinsel. There is a lot of blood and silliness. I am slightly concerned that Groot enjoyed this film so much, quite frankly. Especially since he was plotting with my Christmas tree just a few days later… uh oh.

Groot also got to experience snow for the first time! December 17th was my 30th birthday, and a few of us went snowshoeing up on Cypress Mountain – so of course Groot had to come along. This was my first attempt at snowshoeing since I was about 8, which was not a pleasant memory (the snowshoes were practically as tall as me). Now the snowshoes are much smaller and it was way easier and more fun. It was snowing the entire time and very pretty walking through the snow-covered forest. We’re going to go up again on Grouse Mountain next weekend, so more Groot-in-snow photos are coming!

Getting ready to head up into the trails

So much snow!

Even more snow

We found a little tree hollow on the trail. Me and Groot hanging out in the snow.

Hi everyone! Exciting news, I’ve finished my Baby Groot crochet pattern! It’s available at my Etsy Store . The pattern is $4, and includes 13 pages in PDF with instructions and photos. This is my first real pattern that I’ve written up, and I tried to take into account everything I’ve learned from reading patterns over the years so hopefully it’s clear and easy to follow. If you find any errors or have any questions please email me, I’m happy to help and to improve on the pattern.

Also, if you make a Baby Groot then I’d love to hear from you and see pictures! Please send them my way, or post them on your blog and send me the link – I would be so excited to see other people making my Groot. 🙂 And travel with Groot photos would be even more awesome – take a picture of him in your home city in front of a landmark! I have a few Baby Groot travel photo ops that I still need to post, I swear I will get those up shortly. And it’s only a few more months until Groot goes to Middle Earth, I mean New Zealand. There will definitely be pictures of Groot at Mt Doom. 🙂

Continuing the gallery updates, due South! I realize this probably seems oddly out of place to most people – but
due South was my main fandom for a couple of years and I love it so very
much. Before I started crocheting I sewed the occasional doll
from fabric, and so naturally when I fell hard into this fandom in early
2010 I immediately had to make dolls. Then a few months later I started
crocheting, so what’s a girl to do? I made more due South dolls. I
stopped myself short of making all three leads in the big doll style,
but I still ended up with 3 fabric dolls, 3 small dolls, and 1 big Ray
Kowalski. Because RayK. <3

The original Fraser!doll. I wanted to make him a hat but couldn’t figure out how… so he is hat-less.

However, his belts and jacket come off so you can see his suspenders!

And the original Ray Kowalski doll. 🙂

The original RayVecchio doll

Fraser with his first Ray. 🙂

Fraser with his second Ray (living in a cabin in Canada together forever <3)

My boys all together, because OT3 works too. <3

Fast forward about a year, and it’s crochet time! I was trying to go for a kinda beanie baby look (they actually are filled with little plastic beans), but it didn’t quite work out as I had hoped. Oh well. And still no hat for Fraser, I couldn’t figure out how to make a little crochet Mountie hat. I could probably figure something out now, but doubt I’ll ever get around to it.

The due South cube in my display cube in my living room (where I keep most of my action figures, Funko Pops, and random crochet dolls). The 4 ornaments were made with yarn and plastic mesh a few years back – including a festive Dief! And the little felt Fraser and big!RayK is cuddling was made by a friend of mine for my birthday. Little Fraser is also sitting in an RCMP mug that I got… somewhere. I think it was when I went to the Yukon in 2012.

Switching gears from updating old dolls to my gallery, here’s a quick post with one of my most recent projects. My friend Alan’s birthday was last week, and he’s a big fan of the Japanese singing persona Hatsune Miku. Aside from it being his birthday, he’s also very kindly given me many a ride home from La Fontana after NerdHQ meetups, so it was time to give something back!

This is made straight from a pattern to be quite honest. I Googled all over and was surprised that there aren’t actually that many Miku crochet patterns considering how popular I gather she is. I found a few but none I liked. Eventually I came across this video, and in the comments I found a link to the actual pattern. Which was in Spanish. I hunted around but the only English version I could find was this one. I don’t really understand patterns that use symbols so honestly I just found it kinda confusing… In the end I found a list online of Spanish crochet terms, Google translated the regular text of the pattern, did a few ‘search and replaces’ in Word for the crochet terms, and created my own English pattern. There were a few points that were a bit iffy with the translation, but otherwise it was easy enough. She was fun to make – my other recent projects have been a lot of repetition, so it was satisfying to make something where each piece was pretty small and completed quickly.